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efb
The Potenza caliper is actually an "unranged" brake caliper and is suitable for use with any Campagnolo lever. It's supplied for use predominantly with the entry level groups.
There is slightly more clearance under the unranged brake calipers, which are dual pivot front and rear only. There is no single pivot rear option as there is in the higher groups. Depending on the frame, if you want to run slightly fatter rubber, these calipers might do it for you. Depends on the clearances you need to achieve.
Campagnolo have supplied Shimano-pattern blocks since 2006 optimised for all of their rim materials, BTW ...
Brake shoes on the unranged brake are the current Shimano pattern and the most recent Campagnolo-manufactured Shimano-compatible brake blocks will fit these and all of the current Shimano shoes. All the other brakes use the longer, wider Campagnolo shoe which works better in terms of having a bigger contact area block to rim and a bigger mass of pad material, so better for resonance damping and a tiny advantage in heat dissipation than the more compact Shimano design. Not my numbers or Campag / Fulcrum's, BTW ... but actually a third party component manufacturer's findings when testing all maker's brakes on their rims.
Pad material - softer does not always equate to better - it depends a lot on the rim material as well - even different alloys have different requirements for optimum braking performance and sometimes extremely hard rims actually give better braking with extremely hard pads - Mavic Exalith, Campagnolo Mille, Fulcrum Nite and the new FSA rim are all good examples of that. It may be "intuitively" correct that a soft pad works better but it ain't necessarily so ...
efb ... if Campagnolo (or SRAM, or FSA, or whoever), wanted to just plough the same furrow, they might as well stick a big blue Shimano sign on the roof and have done with it - plain fact of the matter is that there are different and occasionally (shock) better ways of doing everything - long live the difference (or maybe we should all be using Windows PCs with Intel chips on BT "broadband"?) ..!